Gordon Marsden: I beg to move amendment 190, in clause13,page8,line17,at end insert—
“( ) The OfS may strengthen the registration conditions for new providers depending on the assessment of that new provider’s previous track record and future sustainability.”.
This amendment would enable the OfS to set stricter entry requirements for new providers by considering previous history and future forecasts.
It remains a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, even under these heated circumstances. There appears to be a little more of a draft coming through; if we dissipate some of our hot air it may become even greater.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham for what she said because it is germane to this amendment, which is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne and myself. The amendment tries to define what new providers that might wish to become a university have to do, and I think it is incumbent on us to think a little harder than is perhaps sometimes the case about a new provider’s
“previous track record and future sustainability.”
The Minister was quite right not to engage in a “philosophical discussion”— I suspect if he had not said that, the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, the right hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford would have perfectly reasonably bashed him on the head—but there is a balance between that and simply saying, “This is what a university does.” That is particularly true when talking about new providers. In earlier exchanges, the Minister referred to Lord Mandelson, whose grandfather, Herbert Morrison, when asked what the definition of socialism was, famously replied:
“Socialism is what a Labour Government does.”
That is a reductionist argument with which I am sure the Minister would not agree, but we need to ask some serious questions about what guarantees and provisions we would require from new providers.
As I said on Second Reading, the Bill
“places immense faith in the magic of the market”—[Official Report, 19 July 2016; Vol. 613, c. 720.]
to produce new providers and to take them on board. It is philosophically consistent, if I may be so grand, with the paean to competition and the markets in the White Paper, which says:
“With greater diversity in the sector…our primary goal is to raise the overall level of quality. But we must accept that there may be some providers who do not rise to the challenge, and who therefore…choose to close some or all of their courses, or to exit the market completely. The possibility of exit is a natural part of a healthy, competitive, well-functioning market and the Government will not, as a matter of policy, seek to prevent this from happening. The Government should not be in the business of rescuing failing institutions—decisions about restructuring, sustainability, and possible closure are for those institutions’ leaders and governing bodies.”
That is all very well as a paean to free-market Friedmanism, and perhaps those who had drafted it had had a good lunch at the time, but the truth of the matter is that it is not the people who draft such things who have to deal with the consequences, but the people on the receiving end, who are not just students—although students are a key part of that process—but everyone who works with, is sponsored by or supplies those new providers. Therefore, it is important that we talk about  that—we will do so in more detail when we reach clause 40, which deals with some of the issues to do with awarding powers, so I will be careful not to step into that territory.
Cutting corners in the process of becoming a higher education provider can pose a serious risk to staff and students, and it can increase the risk of public money being misused. If we are in any doubt about that, I would refer to the Public Accounts Committee report on alternative providers published in February 2015. The Committee was fair about the potential benefits of alternative providers, but hard on some of the things that had happened in the preceding period. It stated:
“The Department pressed ahead with the expansion of the alternative provider sector without a robust legislative framework to protect public money…and… failed to identify and act quickly on known risks associated with the rapid introduction of schemes to widen access to learning…The Department does not know how much public money may have been wasted…and…should report back to us urgently with an assessment of how much public money is at risk of being wasted”,
and so on. I appreciate that the Minister was not in place at the time, but the report was a fairly comprehensive slap on the wrist for the Department for Education about how the matter had been treated.
No doubt the Minister will come back and say, “Ah, but that was then, and this is now. We have done lots of other new things”, but the trouble is that that argument does not solve the problem. As a result the University and College Union, among other organisations, submitted a detailed paper to Committee members, including a number of specific examples of where things had gone wrong. It argued that to allow commercial providers a quick, low-quality route into establishing universities and awarding degrees would mean that those studying and working in the sector were seriously vulnerable to the threat of for-profit organisations moving into the market for financial gain, rather than from any desire to provide students with a high-quality education or teaching experience.
The University and College Union also quoted figures from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills: between 2010 and 2014-15 the number of alternative providers rose from 94 to 122. Furthermore, the matter is one that concerns the public purse, as well as the protection of students, because student support for those alternative providers rose from £43 million to more than £600 million. Also, in 2014 the National Audit Office reported concerns about abuses of the student loan system by for-profit providers. It mentioned that drop-out rates at nine of them had been higher than 20% in 2012-13, compared with 4% across the sector in general.
As I have mentioned, the Public Accounts Committee published its report in February 2015. If the Minister therefore says, “Ah, well, we don’t want to put more obstacles in the way of potential new providers. We don’t want to make it overly onerous for them”, all I can say is that we have to look at the track record up until now. That is not to disparage any of the new providers who might come forward or the evidence that was given in our sessions. It is merely to say that the precautionary principle is often a wise one to proceed on. It is not often I quote President Reagan with approval. He was famously asked, during SALT negotiations with the Soviets, whether he trusted them. He said he worked on  the principle of “trust but verify”. Trusting but verifying is the thrust of the amendments.
In case the Minister is tempted to say that we are digging up old history, it is not that old. Since he referred to something I said in 2002, I think I am being generous in only digging up recent history. Only this year the West London Vocational Training College had its designation for student support funding revoked following a QAA report that said that it had failed to establish the authenticity of applicants’ academic qualifications, admitted some students who were demonstrably not qualified to enter their course, included some students who had not met the English language proficiency requirement and admitted some students after qualifications awarding body Pearson—which is for profit and has been there for a long time—had blocked it from registering new entrants.
Before the Minister either personally or corporately allows some of his officials to write more paeans to the benefits of the market and competition, perhaps he would indulge us by considering the amendment. It is important that the registration conditions for new providers consider previous track record and future sustainability. Of course, not all new providers will have a track record and I think one of the witnesses mentioned that at the evidence session. If that is the case, the presumption should be to look more stringently at their future sustainability.
The proposal is not that they must have both but they certainly must have one. It is on that basis that I put the amendment forward for consideration.

Wes Streeting: I beg to move amendment 25, in clause14,page8,line27,after “documents” insert “and practices”
This amendment is consequential to amendment 26.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 27, in clause14,page9,line2,at end insert—
‘( ) The list (as originally determined and as revised) must include the principle that the governing body of a higher education provider publish the ratio of pay of the highest paid employee at the institution to the pay of—
(a) the average, and
(b) the lowest
paid employee at that institution.”
This amendment would require, as a public interest governance condition, the governing body of a higher education provider to publish the ratio of pay between the highest, average and lowest paid employees at the institution.
Amendment 26, in clause14,page9,line2,at end insert—
‘( ) The list (as originally determined and as revised) must include the principle that the governing body of a higher education provider appoint as members of any committee established to consider remuneration of the institution’s employees representatives of—
(a) persons employed at the institution, and
(b) persons enrolled at the institution.”
This amendment would require, as a public interest governance condition, the governing body of a registered higher education provider to include staff and student representatives on any remuneration committee.

Jo Johnson: I will press on because this is a complicated set of arguments.
Such double regulation does not seem right, and it would not respect existing devolution arrangements in cases where an institution is already providing higher education across the nations of the UK. To make it a bit less abstract, let me give an example of HEFCE and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales At present HEFCE regulates all HEFCE funded providers who carry on activities wholly or principally in England. Likewise, HEFCW regulates providers whose activities are wholly or principally in Wales. HEFCE regulates activities outside English borders—for example, the Welsh activities of a provider that principally operates in England—and HEFCW regulates the English activities of a provider that principally operates in Wales. Those arrangements ensure that there is neither a regulatory gap, nor double regulation, across the UK.
Giving the OFS the ability to regulate providers involved in providing any HE in England at all, no matter how limited, would upset the current balanced devolution arrangements. Even if the amendment of the hon. Member for Blackpool South were applied only to the public interest governance condition, it would expose Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish providers, which might have only a minimal presence in England, to additional regulation from the OFS for their activities in England.

Gordon Marsden: I beg to move amendment 170, in clause14,page8,line40,after “law”, insert
“, including from Government and other stakeholders”
This amendment would ensure that academic staff are not constrained on academic freedom by Government or other relevant stakeholders.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 171, in clause14,page9,line5,at end insert—
“() relevant student bodies and/or their representatives,
() academic workforce and/or their representatives,”
This amendment would ensure the OfS must consult with students/academic staff before revision of the list.

Gordon Marsden: We return to a subject that we have already begun to touch on and will touch on further: the issue of what happens when things go wrong for whatever reason. I will deal with amendment 172 first, which is a probing amendment. As in the discussion that we had earlier on the issue of 28 days and 40 days, the figure is not entirely arbitrary, but it is a figure that could be played with.
The amendment concerns suspension and would create a sunset clause. Our concern is about natural justice for the provider that has been suspended, but equally we want to make sure that all the people affected by the suspension—we come back to our familiar mantra of workforce, students and so on—are not left in some infernal limbo for an unreasonable period of time. I will not refer to specific examples, but will draw on my own experience of having been on the Select Committee before 2010 when two or three major cases came up, which the Select Committee looked at and which the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education was involved in. There were lengthy proceedings, which in some cases took two to three years to resolve. That was detrimental not only to the provider under investigation, but to all those associated and, by extension, caused problems for the reputation of the sector as a whole. I bear that in mind with this amendment.
After all, if a provider is suspended, there are presumably two outcomes. They are either told, “Go away and put your house in order and we will lift the suspension”, or the provider withdraws from the market or possibly goes and does things and they are then told, “Sorry, this is not going to work”, and then there is a market exit of some sort. But suspension needs to be done in a reasonable and timely fashion. The Minister has the advantage of the rest of us because he has a phalanx of civil servants who can go back and look at previous examples of how long some of these things have taken, and who can consider whether it is not unreasonable to put some form of sunset clause in the Bill. That is the reason for amendment 172.
On the broader and more substantial issues, which again we have touched on to some degree and which I am sure we will touch on again when we come to clauses 40 to 48—I will not engage with the issue of the relevance or otherwise of probationary powers—amendment 174 is about what safeguards there are for students at a suspended institution. We want more meat and potatoes in the Bill to say what is actually going to happen. That is why the amendment would specify what happens to existing students during the suspension period—leave aside the issues for future or indeed past students who might study their degree certificates more nervously than previously, considering the amount of money they have spent to get them—as documented in an institution’s student protection plan.
At this point I want to refer to the paper that the Minister has given us. It is the paper on student protection plans that we discussed this morning. I have speed-read it. I might have said earlier that I think the broad range of intentions are good and perhaps one should not expect to see more than the broad range of intentions, but there are lots of specific points. Before I press the Minister a little further on a couple of points about market exit, it is important to lay out the context, which we touched on to some degree this morning when I talked about the evidence produced in the Government’s White Paper on the expansion of alternative providers up to, I think, 2014 and on the number of institutions that have closed. I will not go over that ground again, but I will say something that I did not have the opportunity to say this morning on the nature of students at alternative providers.
I alluded this morning to the other part of the IFF Research report—commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which was then in charge of higher education—which emphasises the proportionally large number of people from ethnic minorities or from disadvantaged circumstances who study at alternative providers. The Minister will remember our evidence session with a couple of the alternative providers and the discussion that followed with Mr Proudfoot, who represents a range of such providers. Mr Proudfoot specifically emphasised, and wanted us to support, the proportionally large number of people from disadvantaged backgrounds who study at alternative providers. From what the Minister and others have said, we can assume that the Government wish to see an expansion of alternative provision precisely to address some, although we believe by no means all, of the access and participation issues.
Alternative providers are, as it were, the other side of the coin, which is why we feel it is important to press this point. The figures from the survey suggest that 46% of learners at alternative providers are significantly more likely to be from an ethnic minority—46% of respondents were non-white, compared with 10% in the publicly funded sector. There is also some indication that those studying at alternative providers tend to be older, with only 23% aged under 20 at the time of entry, compared with 37% aged over 20 at the time of entry in the publicly funded sector.
I come back to what I said this morning, and have said on other occasions, about the importance of all forms of providers addressing the need for lifelong learning, because people want to come back to reskill and retrain. All of that is good. Concomitantly, when and if alternative providers stumble or fall, there are greater consequences for people who either would have felt wary of coming into higher education—perhaps because no one in their family had been there before or because higher education is not seen as a great strength by their particular ethnic grouping, or for whatever reason—and for people who went into higher education at a later stage. Again, I draw on my experience as an Open University tutor. People who enter higher education at a later stage are often in their middle years and are predominantly women. Often they go to alternative providers because they do shorter-term courses or ones that can be fitted in with a complicated work-life balance. People who were chary about going into the system in the first place, or people who went into the system  knowing that they would have to juggle things quite a lot to do so, will be far more dramatically affected than others, it might be argued, by a collapse in the alternative sector. For all those reasons, we believe it is important to get this right as soon as possible.

I am sorry to have to come back to this, but this is not a question of something that cannot happen, has not happened or, indeed, is not happening. I referred previously to the issues in 2011, when concerns around BPP and the Apollo group caused the previous Secretary of State to pause a major extension in this area. Research Fortnight argued in May—I am sure the Minister will not agree—that
“The government’s proposed reforms are being billed as bold and innovative but in fact they are no such thing.”
It said that the wording
“proportionate for the Bill’s regulatory aspects”
is “code for light touch” and that
“the UK government has instead decided to emulate a model from which many in the rest of the world want to escape.”
We may not share all the conclusions that might come from that, but we are well aware that those other problems exist elsewhere and have affected students. Indeed, a six-country study that was requested by BIS and published by the Centre for Global Higher Education at University College London’s Institute of Education warned of some of these risks. It said that
“relative to the public sector, the quality of provision…is often found wanting, while tuition fees are usually higher.”
The six countries concerned were the US, Australia, Germany, Poland, Japan and Chile. The study went on to say:
“This suggests the need for much tighter regulations in the UK for all private providers, and not just those receiving government funding”—
—I appreciate that today we are dealing specifically with the ones in that category.
I want to press the Minister on these points. When it comes down to the practical, a student at a university that is suspended and has problems will ask, “Who is going to pick up the pieces if it all goes wrong?” We are talking about several different sorts of pieces—how do I continue my degree? What happens about the money I have spent already? What happens if the problems are not picked up until halfway through my course? Apart from financial compensation, the other issue is: if I want to continue with this course, where do I go? That is a huge issue for the Government and the OFS to address.

We are not going to solve this today, but to put the amendment on the face of the Bill would at least suggest that there needs to be a direction of travel. At the moment, the way the Government have set out the provisions is too laissez-faire and assumes that everything will be fine. I will go back to the example I quoted this morning of a question raised in the House of Lords about the West London Vocational Training College. I think that the question was posed—Hansard will or will not bear this out—by the noble Baroness Wolf, and the report in the Times Higher Education tells me that it was the noble Baroness Evans of Bowes Park who responded for the Government. In her answer, published on 1 July, she said:
“The Government has revoked West London Vocational Training College’s designation… Affected students will be supported so they can continue their studies with as limited disruption as possible.”
May I ask the Minister how—this is germane to illustrating the need for amendment 174—those students are being supported? That answer was on 1 July; it is now 15 September. If the Minister cannot respond today, perhaps he will be good enough to update us on precisely how they have been supported. Have they been supported financially? Have they gone to other institutions? I use that example to demonstrate that just saying, “Well, they will be supported,” begs a range of other questions.
I have a whole list of other colleges that have been in similar circumstances recently. I would be interested to know about those, too, although I will not trouble Committee. Perhaps those colleges will be a subject for written questions that might pop on to the Minister’s desk at some point.
These are not hypothetical issues. In its evidence to the Committee, the National Union of Students—having said what it said about the changes to degree-awarding powers—said that there should be a requirement, under clause 13, for all student protection plans to specify
“how students will be protected from any reasonable financial loss”.
It also says, “Should a student’s institution collapse or close their course while they are still studying, through no fault of their own, the student may be at risk of losing course costs, accommodation costs, moving costs and other costs that they would not have incurred had they not gone to that university, and it would be grossly unfair to put a student in a position where they stood to suffer financially for reasons totally beyond their control.”
I think that submission from the National Union of Students is particularly valuable because it lays out the range of issues to be dealt with. It is a question not simply of tuition fees but of all the knock-on effects on people’s accommodation commitments. The cost of accommodation for students, particularly in London, has become a key issue, as I was told when I visited the new University of the Arts London campus in January. If there are failures of that sort—I am not suggesting that in respect of UAL but I am using UAL as an example of how important accommodation costs are in places such as London—there needs to be a clear set of plans for dealing with it.
It is interesting that Carl Lygo, the vice-chancellor of the for-profit BPP University said that the report showed that, while the alternative sector was
“doing a great job at attracting students that would not otherwise go into higher education”,
there was
“quite a lot of instability in the sector”.
He said:
“It is a sector that really does need a track record before progressing on to full degree-awarding powers”.
That is the thrust of much of what the amendment is trying to get at. We do not expect to get much more detail today, although we may press for it in due course. However, we expect to get some sense from the Minister as to how it will be taken forward.
This morning, the Minister prayed in aid, as a good—an unalloyed good—the power to take the cap off the number of students who could go into the sector. He slightly had a go at us for somehow being dog in the  manger about it, but it is not just the Opposition who are questioning the rush for alternative providers. The noble Baroness Wolf, to whom I already referred, has drawn sharply to the Government’s attentions some circumstances that have taken place in Australia as a result of the expansion of private providers, possibly without the necessary precautions.
I am sure that it is no part of the Minister’s wish that if we do not get the regulation and protections right, two or three years after his Bill appears on the statute book, there will be a series of scandals that cause real problems for the reputation of the whole alternative provider sector. I strongly urge him not simply to say, “Oh, well, we have adequate protections already”, or, “Putting this on the face of the Bill is otiose.” The tens of thousands of students who are at alternative providers or, indeed, at existing providers—we are talking not just about alternative providers, but about protecting people at existing longstanding institutions or new people who might be tempted into the market—would not regard these matters as unsuitable for the Bill. If we make this amendment to the Bill, it would give a great deal more reassurance—and direction, which is also important—to the OFS to ensure that this information is available.

Gordon Marsden: I beg to move amendment 175, in clause18,page11,line37,at end insert—
‘(8) The OfS must submit any list produced under subsection (7) to the Secretary of State who shall lay it before Parliament.”
This amendment would ensure the list of providers removed from the register is laid before Parliament.

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 5—De-registration: notification of students—
‘(1) The governing body of a higher education provider must inform all students enrolled on a course if it—
(a) is notified by the OfS of its intention to suspend the provider’s registration under section 17(1),
(b) is notified by the OfS of its intention to remove it from the register under section 19(1),
(c) is notified by the OfS that it will refuse to approve a new access and participation plan under section 21(2), or
(d) has applied to be removed from the register under section 22(1),
(2) The governing body of an institution must notify students under subsection (1) by the date on which—
(a) the suspension takes effect,
(b) the de-registration takes effect, whether enforced or voluntary, or
(c) the expiry date of any existing access and participation plan that will not be renewed and the period of time for which approval of a new plan will be refused,
whichever is applicable.”
This amendment would require that any students still undertaking courses at that provider are notified if the provider becomes deregistered.

Jo Johnson: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Blackpool South for giving me a chance to provide some clarification. The Government believe that anyone with the talent and potential to benefit from higher education should have an opportunity to go to one of our great institutions. In the new world, the OFS will take on responsibility for agreeing access and participation plans, so that even more people can have that chance. However, it is important that the OFS has a backstop power to refuse to agree a new plan where there have been concerns with previous performance, which would be used only in circumstances where it appears that a higher education provider has failed to deliver on commitments in its access and participation plan or has exceeded the specified limits for course fees.
The process that the OFS would follow in those circumstances will be set out in regulations. The regulations will cover the matters that the office for students should or should not take into account in deciding whether to refuse to renew an access and participation plan, the procedure it should follow when giving notice of the refusal to renew a plan, the impact of a notice of refusal and provisions enabling providers to apply for a review before a decision to refuse to renew a plan becomes final. Such detailed arrangements, covering the whole process of agreeing, renewing and enforcing plans, have been set out in regulations since 2004. The hon. Gentleman asked about clause 21(3). Those provisions replicate the provisions in the Higher Education Act 2004.
The Director of Fair Access has not used his powers to enforce compliance with access agreements under the current system. However, we want to ensure that the  office for students has the necessary teeth to act where there are concerns. Such a power underlines the priority that we place on widening participation and the key role the OFS will have in ensuring that continued progress is made in that area. I recommend that this clause stands part of the Bill.

Gordon Marsden: It is extremely helpful of the Minister to lay that out. I asked a very specific question about at what point in the process the director for fair access and participation would be involved and whether he would have full say. I accept that those are issues that can be dealt with when further guidance is put forward. They are important issues. As the Minister has just said, the current director has not yet had to use his powers in this area. If we are looking at a situation where there is going to be a significant expansion of providers over the next 10 years, which the Government’s own technical document makes very clear, we cannot assume that this process will not happen in the future. It would therefore be helpful for the Government and the OFS if some further thought were given to the relationship between the OFS and the director of fair access and participation on the important decision to refuse an access and participation plan as envisaged in clause 21.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: I do not wish to detain the Committee unduly, but the Minister will be well aware that Universities UK has, in its written evidence to the Committee and, I am sure, in person with him, expressed some real concerns about how the concepts of quality and standards are being applied in this legislation.
In the written evidence, Universities UK pointed out to the Committee that the way in which standards should be assessed is not being set out clearly enough, nor has enough clarity been given to the difference between what is meant by “quality” and “standards” throughout the Bill. Universities UK states:
“The quality of higher education provided is clearly a key consideration in the regulation of the sector, although at present the bill makes the relevant condition one which may be applied rather than one which is a mandatory condition of any institution seeking to be included on the register of higher education providers.”It points out that all the clauses subsequent to clause 13 that deal with assessing quality and standards should make the distinction between “quality” and “standards” much clearer.
On that point, clause 23(3) as drafted states:
“‘Standards’ has the same meaning as in section 13(1)(a).”
Clause 13(1)(a) states that
“a condition relating to the quality of, or the standards applied to, the higher education provided by the provider (including requiring the quality to be of a particular level or particular standards to be applied);”.
That does not seem to be a particularly helpful or clear definition.
Will the Minister, from clause 13 onwards and in clauses 23, 25 and 27, assist the Committee in its deliberations by agreeing to put more clarity in the Bill or in regulations?

Jo Johnson: Yes, indeed. There have been representations and plenty of discussion about why the Government felt it necessary to make explicit reference to standards here. The words “quality” and “standards” have distinct meanings within the higher education sector, even though both are encapsulated within what a layperson might consider to be the quality of a degree. While we consider that HEFCE currently has a role in assessing standards as part of its current quality duty, the lack of an explicit mention for standards has created some uncertainty and that requires correction.
Quality refers primarily to processes, such as whether a provider has suitable academic staff or is providing appropriate levels of assessment and feedback. Standards, on the other hand, refer to the level that a student is required to meet to attain a degree or other qualification. The common expectation of standards is set out in the “Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications”, which has the support of the sector.
It is essential that the Office for Students is able to ensure that providers are genuinely offering qualifications that are of a suitable standard to be considered higher education. Otherwise, we could be powerless to prevent a provider offering a qualification in, for example, mathematics which might require students to achieve no higher standards than a C at GCSE, while potentially passing it off as a degree and collecting student support from the taxpayer. This would clearly be unacceptable.
Let me be absolutely clear for the hon. Member for City of Durham and others. This is not about undermining the prerogative of providers in determining standards. It is essential that the office for students is able to ensure that providers are genuinely offering qualifications that are of a suitable standard to be considered higher education, otherwise we might be powerless to prevent a provider offering a qualification in, say, mathematics, which might require students to achieve no higher standard than a C at GCSE, perhaps while passing it off as a degree and collecting student support from the taxpayer. That would clearly be unacceptable.
Let me be absolutely clear for the hon. Member for City of Durham and others: this is not about undermining the prerogative of providers in determining standards. This is about ensuring that all providers in the system are meeting the threshold standards set out in the “Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications”, a document endorsed and agreed by the sector.
We are clear that the Government have no role in prescribing course content or structure and that institutional autonomy, as well as the consequential diversity of content and teaching styles across the sector, are crucial to the reputation and vibrancy of UK HE. However, it is important that we can ensure that the overall quality of HE in this country is not undermined by providers offering substandard qualifications, thus ensuring that students get what they pay for and that the taxpayer receives value for money.
As we heard from Pam Tatlow of MillionPlus during the evidence sessions,
“we have got to protect quality and standards for our students. We have also got to maintain a system in which we can maintain confidence.”––[Official Report, Higher Education and Research Public Bill Committee, 6 September 2016; c. 12, Q11.]
Together with our wider reforms set out in the Bill, clause 23 is a key element of our approach to maintaining a high and rigorous bar for entry into the system and providing effective oversight—goals that I know hon. Members share—while reducing the burden of inspection on those providers that are performing well.